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Cullman Farm City attends National Ag Day Tour, March 27, 2018

Members of the Cullman Farm City Committee sponsored and attended Cullman County Soil and Water Conservation District’s National Ag Day tour on March 27, 2018. Approximately 35 people were in attendance. They visited four farms in Cullman County to observe and learn about how our food is grown from seed to harvest. Cullman Soil and Water employee, and Cullman Farm City Committee Member, Kathy Holmes shares her tour experience with us below.

“Get in touch with Ag”, Oh, the places we went!!!!

Well, we got in touch with Agriculture from the ground up!!! At our first stop on the tour at Kim Haynes Plant Farm, we saw how to plant seeds into trays that held 200 plus planted seeds, then we saw several green house’s full of growing plants 2’’ tall and taller. Some of us even got to plant 2 inch plants ourselves.

Then, we went to Clark Haynes Farm, we saw where sweet potatoes were stored after being dug, we saw them being washed, how they were packed. Clark shared with us his marketing skills for present and the future-in the months to come Clark will be providing sweet potatoes in bags that will go from market to microwave to plate.

Next stop was Riverwood Farm – Stan and Suzanne Wood shared with us the work involved in having a Treasured Forest. We toured some of his grounds and saw the benefits of a manicured forest, and the benefits of fire breaks. Tim Thornhill from Louisiana Pacific shared his knowledge of looking “inside” a tree to see the story of the tree’s life.

We finished the tour at Jeremy Calvert’s Farm. We saw his peach tree orchard in bloom, they were being “pruned” and he told the benefits of the pruning. He talked about the strawberries, and other crops he would have this summer to provide for his fruit stand, as well as send to some farmers markets.